Well, it's official. We took down the Christmas decorations today. Amongst much squawking and objection from the parrots, we packed up the trees, the stockings, the decorations, and the holiday nick nacks. There will be no porch lights coming on at dark. There will be no switching a tree on. The house is back to normal, and Christmas 2013 is officially past. It's always sad, and a bit of a bummer. But, as I pointed out to Chloe as I stashed away the last few items in the cedar chest, it's part of the natural cycle. We have Zack's birthday, a chance to start anew on New Years Day, and a season of winter rest. Then spring will come, along with her birthday, and the flowers and trees will bloom. Then summer comes with Ollie's birthday and the nice, long, warm days. Then fall with it's beautiful colors and golden sunshine and cooler temperatures. And then it's back again - Christmas, in all it's glory, will be back before you know it. They'll get excited again as we hang the stockings while grumbling "it seems we just put these away!" Christmas always comes. That's one thing you can count on. These slow days between Christmas and New Year might seem like a bummer, but I think they're a great opportunity to decompress from the year past and prepare for the year ahead. No doubt, we've all seen and been through a lot (for better or for worse - or both!). We need some slow time to process it all and to determine where we go from here. It's not all bad, and maybe the natural tendency to hibernate during these short winter days gives us a great chance to get back to basics and to really and truly see what matters most to us. What do we want to see grow in our lives? What seeds do we need to plant to help our hopes and dreams to see the sun? What do we want to keep and nurture? What do we need to let go of? It's so easy to blindly jump back into the same old fray without considering how we've changed and grown in the past year. Let's not be so quick to do that this time. Let's take these last days of 2013 to make wise decisions on how to move forward in 2014 and beyond. Yes, the last week of the year is a somewhat weird place to be. But that's ok. We need to break the cycle every now and then to decide if it's a cycle worth continuing, or if it needs some updating and tweaking to work better. That's all today. Take care and have a great week.Bye!

Sherri the Writer

By day, I'm a program assistant. By night, I'm an independent author. My fiction is a dark mirror to the reality I see every day.